I Am All Imagination

There's no power in the world. You will find tonight very practical, yet I assure you, very, very first of all. Christianity has to be continually redeemed from secular history. For Jesus Christ is the human imagination. as Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit which is from God that we might understand the gift bestowed upon us by God, so tonight we will show you one of these gifts if you really understand who Jesus Christ is. I tell you he is your own wonderful human imagination. That is Christ. It comes as a shock when you first hear it if you are raised in the tradition said as the seeker was.

I was raised in a Christian home, and that's likely hundreds of millions of Christians we were taught it as secular history, a little boy who was born of a woman who knew not a man, and that his father was God, he was the son of God, and that was the story as I was taught it, but I was searching and seeking from the time I think I can remember I believe the story of Mother Claudia to him. I did believe it. And I can't tell anyone the shock that was mine. And sometimes maybe I wondered if it would not have been better to return back like Israel in the desert and go back into slavery.

But I couldn't any more than they could. They had to keep moving towards the promised land, for when you are disillusioned having been taught the story as we all have been taught it, to discover that he is not something in history, he is nearer than your breathing, in fact he can't even be there, he is your very self, he is your own wonderful human imagination; it comes as quite a shock, but I can tell it best by telling you a story.

The year was 1933. Roosevelt was elected. I had been in this country for 11 years. I never really wanted to go back to Barbados. My parents came up in that year and they pleaded with me to come to Barbados and join the family, become a member of the family. and I declined. I said no. I saw them off at the boat, and strangely enough, as they sailed and they were on the deck, and I waved goodbye to them, a peculiar feeling came over me, and I had a desire that I never had in the 11 years to go to Barbados. I had just said goodbye to them and said no to their request. They would have paid all expenses and dropped me back, and everything would have been perfect.

Then from the boat I went to my old friend Abdullah. He was born, so I am told, in Ethiopia. He was a black man, raised in the Jewish faith, but really understood Christianity as few men that I ever met understood. He understood the law, not the promise. He understood the law. So I went to him and I told him the feeling that came over me, that I wanted to go to Barbados. I just waved at my parents and a peculiar feeling possessed me. He said to me, you are in Barbados. Well, that did not make sense to me. I'm standing in his place on 72nd street off Central Park West. That's where he lived. He lived at 30 West 72nd Street.

Then I am in this place, and he's telling me that I am in Barbados. He didn't explain what he meant. So as the days went by, I say to him, I am no mayor of the Barbados than I was when I spoke to you. And he said to me, if you are in Barbados, you cannot discuss the means of getting to Barbados. You must actually live in Barbados, in your imagination, as though you were there, just as this. And view the world from Barbados. if you sleep in Barbados and view the world from Barbados the means will occur and you will go to Barbados but as far as I am concerned you are already in Barbados because you desire it very intensely all you have to do is simply to enter it and you enter it now in New York City even though that's 2 ,000 miles across water and you won't want to walk across water, but you enter Barbados and view the world from it.

If you see the world from Barbados, then you have to be in Barbados. He did not explain to me then, but I learned later, that man being all imagination, man is wherever he is in imagination. An imagination is the God in man that is the eternal body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And all things are possible to him. And by him all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made. But what is now proven was once only imagined. These things I did not know then. He simply talked in the overall picture. But I did my best, and I slept mentally in Barbados, in my mother's home. I looked at the world and saw it from Barbados.

I saw New York City 2 ,000 miles to the north of us, the northwest. For we are on a certain latitude, 13 north. New York is 42 north. We are the 59th longitude. New York is the 74th, so I thought North West. As I could imagine it. I heard the tropical noises. We call this land tropical. It really isn't tropical in the true sense of the word. When you go into the tropics, it's something entirely different. I was born in the tropics, almost on the equator. It's an entirely different odor. Some states go like this. You look at the sun and the sun disappears suddenly. A ball of red light becomes green. You're looking at the sun and suddenly in a matter of a sixth second you're seeing a green sun.

You're seeing the complement of red. So we have no highlights in Barbados. The sun goes down rapidly from a red ball to a green ball and you see the of Weemaw, said the whole atmosphere differs when I put myself into that. And said that my mother and father were in their room, and that my brothers, those who were not yet married, were in the house of a huge, big, old home of ours. And there I slept. This was now late October. When it came to the end of November, I said to Ed, I said, Ed, I am no nearer Barbados. He said, you are in Barbados. Then he turned his back on me, walked towards his bedroom, and slammed the door, which was not an invitation to solitude, if you understood as.

He was teaching me a lesson, the lesson of faith. If I am actually sleeping in Barbados, no power in the world could interfere with my journey to Barbados. this is now late November the last trip out of New York City sailing for Barbados was the 6th of December I wanted to get there by Christmas and so I could not raise the question anymore but on the morning of the 4th or the 3rd of December I got a letter from my brother Victor I did not ask him or any member of my family to bring me to Barbados. He wrote a letter and he justified the content in this manner. He said, we are, you know, a large family, nine brothers and a sister.

We have never been united around our Christmas table at Christmas since we were a family. For there was an interval between my sister, Daphne, and the last two boys of eight years. by that time my oldest brother had left for Demerara in British Vienna and by then when he came back my brother Lawrence went off to McGill to study medicine and we were always moving around but this time everyone was present but yours truly and he said I'm enclosing a small little draft fifty dollars but in 1933 when there were seventeen and a half million unemployed and we didn't have two hundred and four million citizens We only had 120 odd million. It was an enormous thing.

If you're not old enough to know it, may I tell you it was really a horror. For I was numbered among the unemployed. And so he knew that I could come if the terms were there, that I had my passage paid. So he enclosed a $50 draft to buy a suit. Well, you could buy a suit in those days for $12, $10. you could buy a pair of shoes McCann shoes for $3 and so I went down to the team ship company because in the letter he said I've notified the company to issue a ticket and then the little $50 you buy what you need for the trip and then sign the chip and when I the ship comes in I'll meet the ship and pay all the things that you have incurred all the debt so I went down to the ship is saying to me, I'm sorry, Mr.

Goddard, but we do not have a first -class passage for you. We can accommodate you third -class. You have the first -class accommodation for meals, and you can have all the other areas of the first -class. But for sleeping, you have to go to the third -class. I said, sir, if you're all right with me, I'll take it. I went back to Abdullah, and I told him. You know what he did? When I said, I'm I'm going third class to Barbados, but I have the accommodation as the first for the daylight hours. He said, who told you you're going third class? You are already in Barbados. And you went third class. Again, he closed the door on me.

I went down to the ship the morning it sailed on the 6th of December. And the ticket agent said to me, Mr. Goddard, I have good news for you. We have a cancellation. And now you can go third class, but you'll share it with two others, or three in the cabin. It's perfectly all right with me. And so I went down third class. Abdullah said to me, you know Neville, when you return from Barbados, you will have died. Never explain a statement of that nature. You will have died. I'm coming back from Barbados, but I will have died. He spoke in the cryptic manner. Well, I did. I went down to Barbados. I was a sick vegetarian.

I had not eaten one piece of meat or fish or fowl in seven years. No smoking, no alcohol, no sex. This illusion in my first marriage and the whole thing was simply I became a celibate. I came back from Barbados and in Barbados I was the same being that I was when I arrived to the annoyance of my family for they made all their money in groceries selling meat, pig, alcohol, everything and I am enjoying a trip based upon their efforts and here I am not taking what they offer on my way north I did everything I had not done in seven years. He was right. I died. That state of consciousness died. That's what died.

Never is the immortal being, that is the inner man, is immortal. I was locked in a state. The state I departed from. So as far as I am concerned, I died to that state. You see, life is nothing more than a hunger. This whole vast world is a hunger. And there are a number of states of consciousness from which you and I can view the world to satisfy our hunger. So, we get out of one state into the other state. And we do it in the same way I went to Barbados. sleeping physically in New York City in my imagination I slept in Barbados and my brother was moved to send me a ticket and justified it by telling me the story of a family who had never been together at Christmas to make it easy for me to say yes for I did not be questioned, I did not ask it; he simply wrote the letter and enclosed a little draft and told me to go and get my ticket, so I was there for three months and I came back and then I tell you to discover the creative power of the world was my own imagination with an awkward self.

It was easier in the past to believe in an external Christ. Much easier to believe in an external God to whom I could pray. And then if he didn't answer we'll say, well, all right. So he doesn't want me to have it, and I could justify failure. But then I had no escape and that is a very difficult thing. I couldn't turn to the left or the right and praise or blame anyone for I found the cause of the phenomena of life and that cause was my own wonderful human imagination and that is what Scripture calls God and calls Jesus Christ. then I would read it different and I would go to the pictures with him.

I recorded that I took him to see a certain picture and he should never tell me, Do you get anything out of it? And I began to interpret it for him. He was the Count of Monte Cristo. He should interpret it for him, and when I did, he was so excited and so thrilled that I had learned the lesson that everything is teaching us the same lesson in this world. There is nothing but God in the world. So here, I one day took up the chapter of John, the 14th chapter of John. And I interpreted this for him because he would have me rise and not more than say a dozen or 20 of us came to the meeting.

He taught Hebrew. That's where I learned my Hebrew. truth. And when I took the 14th of John and began to sing in this manner, again the excitement came over me. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. In In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told him that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you shall be also. And I explained it to him in the lines of what I just told you about my sister Barbary. I prepared a place for this outer man that could do nothing but be anchored by his senses.

Here I was living in a basement on 75th Street, and my senses dictated the fact that I had no money, but none, and unemployed. I couldn't possibly get to the Bronx without borrowing the nickel, and yet I wanted those to probably do. The inner man was my imagination, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ, and all things are possible to him if I can believe him. So now I go and prepare a place for you, Neville, the other Neville. And so I stepped in Barbados. And I saw the world as I would have to see it were I in Barbados. And in a short six weeks, the means came, and I made the most heavenly trip to Barbados.

Three months in Barbados, and a lovely trip back, bringing back adequate funds to tide me over for a while, for a gift of my family, which I did not solicit. So I then discovered who the Christ of Kipcha was. He was my own wonderful human imagination. But by tradition I thought along the way, I went back to the traditional concept, and the belief in my senses, and the belief in the evidence of my senses, and what they dictated, until finally you break through from the traditional God to the God of experience. I experienced God on that hit. Because who did it? I did it all in my imagination. And it came to pass. And if by him all things are made, and without him there is nothing made that is made.

And I know exactly what I did was that I found him. I found him through Moses and the law and the prophet's role. But I found him, and I still called him Neville. I didn't call him by another name. The Bible calls him Jesus Christ, which means God the Savior. But I found the Savior, and he was my own wonderful human imagination. And that was an awful shock, because here is a normal man with all the weaknesses of the world, all the limitations of the flesh, things that I had done of which I was not proud, and possibly felt capable of doing, and yet that was God. So your own wonderful human imagination, I know from experience, is God.

That's the Christ of Scripture. Now, imagination per se is the stuff out of which you fashion our world. We are told that without faith it is impossible to please him. We read that in the 11th chapter, the 6th verse of the epistle to the Hebrews. Without faith it is impossible to please him. Now what is faith? It's described in that same 11th chapter. But let me give you another definition. Faith is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. I hoped to go to Barbados; I subjectively appropriated it. Physically I was in New York City, on 75th Street; subjectively I was in Barbados, and then to prove that I was in Barbados, I simply looked at the world as I could see the world as I would have to see it were I in Barbados; then I subjectively appropriated that place.

If I step in New York City, and still know I am in New York City, I will remain there forever; there will be no change in my world. I have to subjectively appropriate my objective hope. My objective hope of the being body now whatever one has as an objective hope, they must now subjectively appropriate. Appropriated. And sleep in that subjective appropriation. You want to be in you name it. All right. You simply subjectively appropriate it. And that was the beginning of my transition from a god of tradition to a god of excellence. And when I came back to New York City, friends of mine who knew me in the days when I never touched alcohol or smoking, I never acquired smoking I tried it but I couldn't seem to get it as a whole I got it other things like spells you name it all these things I do I start not to sometimes but nevertheless I did it to discover it didn't hurt me at all concerning my spiritual advancement that they accused him the human imagination of being a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of sinners one who loves the company of harlots and tax collectors and all the things of the world that people shun and here was the human imagination in the midst of it all trying to show everyone who he is that he is actually buried in man and he will rise one day in man as the man in whom he rises.

And when it did happen to me in 1959, what a shock. But it was back in 1933 that this thing actually began to unfold within me. When old Ab would not explain what he meant when he said to me, you are embodies. So if you say to me right now, I would like to have a hundred thousand dollars if I were now telling you as he would tell it to me I would say you have it if you do not sleep tonight in the possession of it you are not doing what I have told you if you want anything you simply sleep in it as though you had it the secret of feeling as if it were true that's the secret and so we receive not the spirit of the world the spirit of the world is doubt.

The body of doubt is Satan. And as Blake so clearly and bitterly stated it, O my Satan, thou art but a nut and dost not know the garment from the man. This is the garment. Limited by five senses. Limited by what reason dictates to it. So tonight when I go to sleep, be himself and you are now sleeping at 1025 Farrell Drive. and reason is telling me what I have in the world. And because I don't like what I seem to have and reason dictates, I must dare to assume that I am that which I would like to be and speak in that state rather than the state that my reason and my senses dictate.

to do. If I dare to do it, I know from the claim to 1933 that it worked. I have taught that law to everyone who will listen to it. Many will listen, yes, many have proved it, but we are teachers of habit. And when all day long and every moment of time reason is dictated, we tend to go back to what reason dictates and what the senses dictate. What the being who is seeking in you is the Lord Jesus Christ and is your own wonderful human imagination. So he is telling you, be not afraid. Let not your heart be troubled. For in my Father's house there are many mansions. Mansions means states of consciousness. And these are all for the purpose of satisfying the hunger of the man.

I hunger for Barbados. It is a state to satisfy that hunger. Today we'll come to be a hunger that's not a thing in this world that's satisfied but an experience of God.

That's a state of consciousness. There is a hunger for money that's nothing but satisfied but money. There's a hunger for things and nothing but fame. Trivial as it is, nothing will satisfy it but fame, as you understand fame. So these are all states. So you enter into the state of the hunger and view the world from it and satisfy your hunger. For if you are now known, as you want to be known, then the hunger to be known is satisfied. If you want to be anything, and then you view the world from that state, and the worldview of those subjectives confirms what you are actually seeing and experiencing subjectively. So then your hunger has been satisfied.

Now, having done it in my own taste, a brutal incident was built without my conscious reasoning mind. I didn't write my bugger letter. I didn't buy the $50 dress. I didn't notify the shipping company to issue a ticket to me. All that came by mail. He was influenced two thousand miles away by my assumption. I dared to appropriate subjectively my objective hope, so take your hope, your objective hope, and then appropriate it subjectively, and sleep in it as though it were true. If you dare to sleep in it as though it is actually true, in a way you do not know, that bridge of influence will appear, and you will be compelled to walk across that bridge to the fulfillment of the subjective appropriation. For when you get to the end, it is now the fulfillment of the objective hope. This is what this night I would share with you.

I tell it from experience, and then from then on, when I found a crisis in my life, I apply this. I do not live by every second of time, because I am purely satisfied with the life I live, and there is no need for constant change in my life, but there are moments in the lives of all of us where we reach a crisis, and then you have to take action.

If you know who Christ is, for bear in mind, by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. So do not become so completely anchored to the outer Dharma that you think is yourself. It's only a Dharma. And forget the inner man, the imaginative man, who is the immortal you. The imaginative man is God himself. And the day will come that he will be born. For this whole vast drama, I could break it into three patterns. Innocence, experience, imagination. And when you reach that stage, the first stage of imagination, you're going towards the end. For we came out of the world of experience into a world— I mean the world of innocence— into the world of experience. I move towards an awakening imagination, which is God himself.

So we are told all things are possible to God. Then we are told all things are possible to him who believes. So the 19th chapter of Matthew tells us with God all things are possible. The ninth chapter of Mark tells us, all things are possible to him who believes. So he equates God with a man who can believe. You can't get away from that equation. If all things are possible to God and all things are possible to the one who believes, then he equates the one who believes with God.

Now I know the difference between thinking from my wish fulfilled. Field, I'm thinking of it. I am always thinking from where I am. ¶I'm of where I am not. ¶Right now I am thinking from this room. I'm of my home where my wife is now. But this room is more real now than where she is because I am thinking from here. And I'm thinking of there. You're secretly thinking from it. ¶When you enter into a state and think from it, you give it all the tones of reality. You give it all the sensory bitterness that you can muster. And then when you open your eyes and you break the cells, you think, now what have I done?

That was all imagination. ¶The world was full of all for imagination is God. You've set in motion a reality and you do not have now to devise the means which will be employed to move you from where you are physically to where you are in imagination. ¶So listen to the words carefully. ¶And now I go to prepare a place for you. When I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and take you to myself that where I am there you shall be also. ¶He is speaking to this garment. This garment can't go. You sit it on a chair, put it on a bed, throw it on the floor. But he, the inner man, can be any place in this world.

And viewing the world from where he is in imagination, which is reality, he returns to the garment that he left behind. And he takes it to himself. ¶So I will return, having gone and repaired the place, I return and take you to myself. That where I am, where in consciousness, in my imagination, which is the only reality, there ye shall be also. ¶So I went into Barbados in my imagination. And that was Christ. But I left the little garment that I wore on 75 feet in New York City. Then I returned the next morning and took it up. All right. ¶Six weeks passed by and seemingly nothing happened. But it came with sudden shockings. Out of nowhere, the letter under my door says, in those days, what on earth would you be getting up early when there were 17 odd million unemployed and I was a dentist.

Who wanted to the dentist. When they couldn't eat, how could they pay to go to see a dentist? If I could find a job in a restaurant, dentists are nothing but guests for the food I don't take with me. People who are not my age have no idea of the depression of those days. ¶We speak of a recession today where there are 6 million unemployed with 204 million in our country country, there were 17 odd million, and that was not quite the true figure, and it only had 150 odd million. If you know New York City, there's a place called Gimbel, and Gimbel moves all the way to Penn Station. And the hallway walking through from Gimbel to Penn Station would be from there to about here.

¶I have seen men severed in deep all the way sleeping at night no place to go at least the head is seated for them that's where they slept they slept all over the place and what they could bathe or eat out that's what they got they had no social security in those days no welfare aid in those days and we had 17 and a half million unemployed employees. ¶So I know what it is to go through a drug experience. And without one nickel, I can make a trip to Barbados that costs someone, costs a family, well over a thousand dollars. In those days, a dollar was really two or three dollars that comes to buying things.

But I did have fun. Got on that ship, these two elderly men so that was 1932 and I was born in 1905 so you know my age I was the young one of the three, one was a a big stream dramatic fellow making his trip himself, and one was an orthodox Jew, and what a combination, the three of us. And so the orthodox Jew, a little fellow, he saw my new suit, I paid $12 .50 for it, and he said to me, how much did you pay for this? I said, $12 .50. He said, they robbed you. I said, they robbed me. He said, yes, they robbed me, and let me tell you something: if it starts to rain, run, you'll never get out of it; they'll shrink right up to here on you.

And here was this other fellow: both elderly gentlemen. The Nazi he was ranting all day long how Germany is going to take over all the rest of India, and eventually take over America. And the two others were at it. And the little Jewish Orthodox man was reading his Bible, most of the time, in Hebrew, which talked to me about my suit, or things of that sort. And the other fellow was all silent. By science, he makes astrology. He believes in astrology. He He believes in all these isms. Well, that was my ten-day experience. What an experience. And it all adds up. In the end, it all adds up. So I had the most fabulous trip all the way down.

And came back to fulfill my same prophecy. You would have died. And I did. I died to escape. Not the immortal man cannot die, eyes, but I didn't realize I was locked in a state until I began to sleep in another state, and sleeping in another state. That state became the reality. And the old state that could not eat fish or fowl or meat or eggs or anything, delighted in eating fish and fowl and all the things that the other one couldn't do. So every state is right for itself. And so until one gets out of a state, don't try to hit him over the head, he can't hear you. He knows what he is doing is the only truth, the only reality.

If he really believes that clams are going to poison him, do you know it'll poison him? You and I will sit down and eat the most glorious bunch of clams. He will sit and eat the same from the same dish and he'll poison you. I had that experience when I was a sick vegetarian: I went to Toronto, a friend of mine invited me to her house there, and she took ill according to the salmon that she really prepared a beautiful salmon. But I was not eating fish or meat or fowl or anything in those days, but I guess I was trained never to offend a host, and so I forced myself to eat what was put before me.

It was the first time I broke my fast in these many years. Do you know there were seven of us at the table? My host and hostess, my dancing partner and her mother, and then two sons. There were a bunch of us around. And I was the only one with tome and poison. I came down. I was poisoned and poisoned beyond measure that night. And And everyone ate the same fish. But I was eating again the grain of my own being. I knew I was doing wrong by my own, at the moment, moral, ethical power. And I was poisoned. And they all survived. Well, the body survived too. But I mean, I was really sick.

So the most marvelous thing in the world will poison you if you think that it is wrong in what you do. So here is all in your own wonderful human imagination that is God and created the tree of knowledge of good and evil and seen them in the world of experience and there are only two things in the entire 66 books of scripture that displeases God. You can read from beginning to end and you will not find more than two that truly displeases of God. And one is lack of faith in I am he. And the other is eating of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. Now we all have eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

I know I have. But the whole back world, young and ten years away, comes at the leap that I am he. So the lack of faith in I am he and keeping a good tree of knowledge of good and evil are the two things that displeases God as mentioned in Scripture. I can't find the third one. I find no third, only these two. So be still and know that I am God. As we are told, unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sin. Because the I am in you is your own wonderful human imagination. And you can put it any place in the world. You need not be anchored to where your senses tell you that you are.

Now let me speak tenderly to a lady who is here. She wants to sell a home. You can't sell the home if night after night you sleep in their home. You have to sleep elsewhere mentally. I do not mean physically. Physically I slept in a basement on 75th Street in New York City, but in my imagination I slept in my mother's home in Barbados, and within six weeks I was in my mother's home in Barbados. Then I had not a nickel towards the venture that cost well in let him expect of a thousand dollars. And it was all made available as a gift. He was not alone. It was a gift. If you want to sell that home, seriously, you have to actually let it go in your imagination and see as you would see and where you would see if you had sold it.

And then night after night see in that state where would you see if you had sold it. Unless you want to re- -rent a room in your place which is not what you want to do, so I said every one if you know who Jesus Christ is, you are free. The day will come you will know he really is the Father, and that day is the most thrilling day in Mexico when David in spirit calls you Father. No, I didn't bring a watch tonight, so I do not know what time it is, but now we'll go into the silence.